Arena Media 

The Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane is a vision of glamour and grandeur. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon as the attendees of the Performance Marketing Awards congregated outside the entrance to meet friends and colleagues last Tuesday, the 7th of May. Everyone had made an effort with their formal attire and the ladies impressed in a mixture of stylish outfits. Champagne flowed and soon, we were gestured into the great hall to a 3 course meal before the awards took place. It’s amazing that a room so big could look so crowded, full of innovative and creative people, all hoping that their hard work has paid off!

As the award ceremony started and the categories were swiftly read out, it really hits you that you are potentially going to have to walk up on stage and collect an award on behalf of your team. Both an exciting, yet nervy feeling, waiting to hear the winners.

The awards really give the creative talent and intelligent digital marketers of this industry a chance to shine. The award submissions are challenging and time consuming, so it’s a great achievement for Arena to have been shortlisted for all 4 submitted awards. We came highly commended for ‘Best Agency’ and for ‘Best Brand Engagement Campaign’ with Squawka for Domino’s Pizza. We were up against the likes of Starcom MediaVest, Mindshare and MEC. The affiliate team are proud to be highly commended, though the winner of this award, 7things Media, managed to retain this award for the third year running. 

One of our campaigns was recognised as a winner: the award for ‘Most incremental Performance Marketing Campaign’ was submitted by Topcashback and their work with Domino’s Pizza.

There have been 2 pieces of news doing the rounds in the last week on how Twitter influences TV viewing. In the US, Nielsen has just released a study that shows that, on average, an 8.5% jump in Twitter conversation about a show generated a 1% increase in ratings. And closer to home, UKTV have said that they believe Twitter conversation has driven TV ratings for their shows.

David Brailsford, the man behind the world dominance of British Cycling, was at Advertising Week on Monday, giving a talk on ‘winning’, with interview questions coming from Martin Sorrell.

One of the things he talked about was goal setting – how to do it right, how to make sure you are setting the right goals, and how to ensure you achieve your goals.

As a cycling fan (armchair only – no lycra), I was excited but sceptical when David Brailsford announced in 2010, shortly after the Sky Cycling team was put together, that they “would win the Tour de France with a British rider, within five years”. After all, the British had a very poor track record in the Tour de France, despite the success on the track in the noughties. What did the team know about the Tour? Did they have the riders to do it? The tactics? The know how?

Of course they actually achieved their goal within 2 years, with Bradley Wiggins’s famous victory in the 2012 Tour – and with Team Sky’s Chris Froome in second place. So it’s probably worth listening to what David Brailsford has to say about effective goal setting. I’ve distilled what he said into four handy tips.

Today is my final day at MWC and fittingly the emphasis in the conference this morning shifted towards how mobile is impacting the media industry. From Terminal 2, Barcelona Airport, here are my observations from the morning session: